GIZMOS, WHIRLY GIGS, &
WHAT NOT…
Complied Articles
by WES STEWART, UPI
QUE DANKE
Language may be the largest barrier
to e-commerce. Let's face it -- with
the world connected to each other we certainly have a global commerce
opportunity. According to WIRED magazine, the translation business will be
a
big one. Here's where you can get some translation done for Web sites:
http://www.dictionary.com/translate/
http://www.babelfish.altavista.com
http://translator.go.com
If you need to provide seamless translation to Asian languages, there's a
bit of a problem. All of the above listed sites are only good for English,
Spanish, French (poorly spoken of course), German and Portuguese.
Fortunately, an upstart called Wholetree.com (http://www.wholetree.com)
can help create a translated version of your Web site.
HOW BIG IS BIG?
When we first started to tinker with hard drives, they cost thousands of
dollars and were half the size of a shoebox. They weighed four to eight
pounds and were a "talent" to install. Priam was king of the hill with their
220MB RLL drive with around a $2000 price tag.
As we look over the advertisements in recent PC literature, we are stunned
by the storage capacity of the drives currently available. Back in Priam's
day, it would have cost $5000 to get 1-gigabyte of hard drive. You would
have had to use four full height bays or an outrigger to power them.
Today you get a 14GB drive for less than $200.
Just as much as the drive has changed, what goes on the drive has changed,
too. A 200MB drive was a good-sized drive when DOS ruled the roost. Windows
of all sorts (3.1, 95, 98, NT) have immense libraries that are essential to
making the programs work. They are in a sense, less self-contained that the
DOS programs of old. You need more space. Windows 2000 consumes huge chunks
of space compared with other OS's because of its non-shared files. In the
old Windows scheme, common files were shared between applications. Windows
2000 demands that applications have their own libraries. While this
structure makes a more crash-free system, it does demand a great deal more
from storage devices.
Our advice in the past has been to get as much storage as you can afford.
We stand behind that still. The good news is that you can get more storage
for your money today than ever before: about 10 to 15 cents or less per meg
is not unusual to find.
[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>
CALLING CARD
There's never a shortage of competitive
advertising for your 1+ dialing
plan. Five cents, seven cents, 10-10's and the whole lot can make the call
from your home phone rather cheap. But what about while you're on the road
or overseas? Good heavens! You start with a couple of bucks (bob for Brits)
and pay quite a lot for the time. We discovered Voicenet. No fees and only
around 10 cents a minute from the UK to the US. Cool. No sign-up fee either.
http://www.voicenetcard.com/
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WIRELESS SECRETARY
We've noticed a novel add-in for
Outlook 2000 that will forward your
e-mail to a pager or other wireless device, such as a PCS phone. The trail
is free at
http://officeupdate.microsoft.com/2000/downloaddetails/ws20000.htm
All articles, United Press International
Copyright 2000
All rights reserved.